Harsh fantasy
by bookmawkish
Summary: You're not sure why the fantasy of Loki turning up at your door injured and in need of help has such a draw on you. The reality, of course, seems to have its own problems. Loki X Reader


**Because sometimes one can get too serious when writing Hurt/Comfort (though I love it) and because certain Asgardians see romance differently.**

**One use of strong language, lots of blood, Loki!Whump, humour, mild satire. No gender specified for Reader. No regrets.**

* * *

When you've imagined it (and you have, many times) you've imagined that he might bleed with dignity.

That perhaps the blood might seem noble: he'd be pale and interesting and perhaps a little brave in the face of injury. Or he'd fight you at first, blind with pain, but then, subdued by kindness, he'd relent. So you could look after him. There'd be hot tea and cold flannels. And he'd be grateful, in the end, to you for what you've done and how good you've been to such a callous villain, and maybe…well, the maybes have kept your mind occupied pretty much ever since you've known him.

"Oh, my God! What _happened_?"

Your god, indeed. You're not sure why imagining Loki turning up at your door injured and in need of help has such a draw on you. There's a whole extra section of maybes attached to this concept. Maybe it's because he seems so desperate not to need anyone while at the same time needing them horribly. Maybe it's because you've got an undisclosed desire to rescue, spawned by your own unconscious need to be rescued.

Or maybe it's just because it's a convenient fantasy, and one you can safely replay again and again because the chances of it actually happening are astronomically small.

Fantasy is fantasy. Loki's blood is real. And right now your carpet's getting sticky with it and it's just terrifying and unpleasant and there's just so _much _-

"Help me," he gasps, and you almost can't. The red on his body drips, thickly, and starts to puddle. You're looking everywhere to try and avoid the ugliness of it, but there seems to be blood coming from a hundred places and it's only when he snaps, harshly: "_Now!" _that you meet his eyes. You can feel that command had a fleeting, fading wisp of his power behind it: the fact that you're not immediately moving, zombie-like, to do his bidding means he must be exhausted indeed. He is huddled against your doorframe, half on his knees, and looking up at you with pained, narrowed eyes.

He is not pleading. And he is about as far away from grateful as he can get. There are steely shades of that kneel-before-me-mortal look in his expression. He demands and expects that you will help him. No alternatives. In that instant you can understand why a whole lot of people hate him.

It takes you longer than you care to think about to bend to his side and get your hands dirty, slipping them under his hunched arms to pull him across the threshold and into the relative sanctuary of your apartment.

He's taller than you, and the weight of him is surprising given his slender body. He limps along at your side, his arm across your shoulders, his feet stumbling. The overwhelming smell of his blood is unlike anything you've smelt before: more metallic than human, more like spice. If it were the scent spilling out of a nearby patisserie, it would be alluring; but this is blood and it's cloying and revolting, more so because this is your friend who's bleeding. You gag slightly.

As you get him into the bathroom (the best option: tile that's easily mopped and easy access to the medicine box) his boots cant skittishly against the floor and his weight suddenly gets heavier. In an instant, he's borne you to the ground with his body. You both hit the floor, you crying out in alarm, him ominously silent.

This too is something that in your fantasy would have been more wildly romantic. He'd have been on top of you, probably. His hands cradling your head, his dark hair shrouding your face. That smile, lingering above you, despite his pain. You'd have made him feel better with a kiss.

The fantasy didn't feature a slick of his blood dragging stickily over your hand and up your forearm, and the feel of his heart hammering painfully, dangerously against you, presumably pumping more blood out of his wounds. Or the fact that the curving leather moulding of his Asgardian formal wear is digging painfully into your hip.

He's also unconscious, which helps put the fantasy firmly in its place. You roll him off you, wince a little as his head cracks the tiled floor, and hurry to get towels to put under his neck.

Being friends with Loki has always had its downsides. It's not a friendship you'd enter into lightly. It's not in fact a friendship you chose to enter into, initially, past the immediate lightning strike of his physical appearance and charisma when you'd first glimpsed him on Earth. It just sort of happened.

He's dangerous. He knows it. You know it. You wouldn't have said you were the sort of person who cultivated dangerous friendships. But you're definitely the sort of person who cultivates Loki.

Towel deployed to cradle his head, you check his pulse (it's beating) and his breathing (he is). Reassured by this, you scramble for the medicine box. In your dreams it's full of snow-white bandages, antiseptic wipes and exactly the right amount of cotton wadding. You tip it out onto another towel (cleaner than the floor - somehow you never managed to think about the possibility of bacteria in your fantasies). What's actually inside it are two Q-tips, one with the head missing, half a box of grubby Band-aids with cartoon characters on that have been there roughly since you were twelve, a bottle of headache pills and a twisted, equally ancient tube of acne cream. All of which is about as useful as a single mop during the collapse of the Hoover Dam.

"_Fuck."_

Loki, as if hearing you, groans and arches his spine against the floor, evidently coming around. The slashed leather of his clothes creaks and gapes across his chest as he arches up, making it obvious that he's been attacked with something sharp. Really dreading what you may find, you gently pull aside bits of clothing, shift his trembling arms and legs to see more clearly. There are bleeding gashes everywhere, arranged almost artistically across chest, along length of thigh, one delicately describing the length of his cheekbone. He shudders and hisses your name through clenched teeth.

In return you utter a few more choice swearwords, and start thinking about taking him to hospital. Nothing you've ever dreamed about has featured trying to explain to emergency doctors and police why you have a beaten-up alien/deity in the back of your car. But now you can see it clearly in your head, the long hours in the drab waiting room, the terrible vending-machine coffee, the forms and the accusations and the endless questions. Who knows, this may even count as an interdimensional political incident. This is the _prince_ of another world you've got here. There's probably a million things you're doing (or not doing) right now that will mean Odin nukes your country first with Gungnir when he gets here.

This particular thought is the ultimate fantasy-killer. So, just like that, you panic. Your phone hits the floor as you fumble pulling it from your pocket, your mind garbling _911, 911, 911 _over and over again.

Loki's hand comes up, blindingly fast, grips your arm and yanks you down toward him so that your face is inches from his. Those green eyes open and fix you intently. You've never been able to look away from those eyes successfully once he's got you in his sights. His grip on your wrist is suddenly your whole world: his quirked, assessing expression behind the mask of blood your universe.

"You know," he says, quite calmly, "you humans are _so_ hard to please sometimes."

And the blood all over him (and you, and your bathroom) evaporates like mist under the sun. His laughing look emerges from behind the gore, and he's as pale and handsome and infuriating as he's ever been. Unscathed. Unmarked.

Although, oddly, his clothes remain slashed revealingly in several places.

You're speechless. For more than one reason. When you do find words, they're not particularly helpful ones.

"What the - _what _-"

He frowns playfully with a suggestion of pout, and rolls you both with a quick tug on your snared arm. Your head drops neatly into the pile of towels you'd set down for him earlier. There's no blood on them, either. Only the scent of spices remains, stronger now and more smoky and pleasant, like incense. This, you realise belatedly, is the scent of his magic.

He braces himself on his other hand above you, still grinning, still holding you pinned by the wrist.

"I made sure to put all the precise details in," he murmurs. "I took time. I _prepared_. So what in Hel's name were you thinking of? Calling for help, indeed!"

"Me?" Your natural indignation takes over. "What was _I_ thinking of? What were _you_ thinking of, showing up like you were about to die on my doorstep?"

He chuckles, a lazy cat-purr of sound.

"Wasn't this what you wanted?"

His face moves closer, rubbing his cheek against yours, the sharp edge of his nose stroking along the line of your jaw. Your head rolls back, unbidden: your free hand comes up to slip into the slashed and gaping lines of his clothes.

And even in that moment, you don't know whether to be elated or furious. He's evidently chosen to move you that step beyond just being his friend, but he's done it by pretending to bleed to death on your carpet. You're both overjoyed that he's made such an effort just to attract you, and also pretty fairly disturbed by the sheer realism of his chosen overture - and what it says about what he knows about the inside of your head.

That smile lingers above you, despite your confliction. He makes you feel better with a kiss.


End file.
